


Spoils of Habit

by grrlock



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Affairs, Angst, Cheating, Drug Use, F/M, Lies, Mental Health Issues, Parent-Child Relationship, Rosamund is Sherlock's child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 15:26:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8896936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grrlock/pseuds/grrlock
Summary: Rosamund is Sherlock's baby, and the affair is still going. John finds out.--  Sherlock’s tastes run toward a particularly intimate kind of danger. Irene had struck him with the point of a needle and the end of a riding crop, tilting his mind, bruising his flesh. She’d got under his skin.  Mary… Mary had grazed his heart.





	

Sherlock had been projecting. 

He'd watched John turn into a crumpled ball of rage in the face of his wife’s betrayal, and there he’d stood in the doorway, the third party, betraying his own heart without even realising it.

_You’re abnormally attracted to dangerous situations and people._

Well. That had been true of everyone in the room, obviously, but Sherlock’s tastes run toward a particularly intimate kind of danger. Irene had struck him with the point of a needle and the end of a riding crop, tilting his mind, bruising his flesh. She’d got under his skin.

Mary… Mary had grazed his heart. 

The first bullet had entered months ago. The second bullet—the real one—might as well have been a love letter shot from the end of a gun. 

**_BANG!!!_ **

_Why is she like that?_

_Because you chose her._

The femme fatale. Let it never be said that Sherlock Holmes doesn’t have a type.

 _I know what he likes_ , Irene had casually said, and Mary had echoed her by the fireside, her eyes steady on John, the object of all her deceptions.

_It’s what you like._

_—_

When everything began, he’d barely wiped away the last traces of blood from his nose when John’s would-be fiancee simply appeared in the lonely kitchen of 221B, warm, perfumed, illicitly stealthy. She kissed him without preamble. It had _hurt_. Sherlock’s eyes had watered, and a fresh trickle of blood had eased from his right nostril, but Mary had held onto him as she eased back, watching the red rivulet slip down Sherlock’s upper lip. When she scraped it away with her teeth, her eyes glittered.

—

 _Who is she?_ Sherlock had asked John on that night of duplicitous revelations.

_The woman who’s carrying my child who has lied to me since the day I met her?_

_No._

No, John. Not your child.

—

When everything is ending, Sherlock passes a hand discreetly over Mary’s belly as they say goodbye on the tarmac. This ought to be more painful, but he’s thought ahead and subsequently thought better of it. Artificial calm floats in his veins. He kisses Mary’s cheek.

 _Don’t worry_ , she tells him, _I’ll keep him in trouble._

_That’s my girl._

—

Rosamund. Rosie. Not a name he would have chosen—if they had to go the floral route, he’s always been partial to Violet. John considered that suggestion a little longer than he’d considered “Sherlock,” but ultimately concluded he didn’t like the sound of it. _Sounds too much like “violent,”_ he’d said.

Whenever John is at the clinic, Sherlock drops in on Mary and gathers up their child in his arms, studying her bewildered blue eyes and wondering if she’ll be anything like her mother. 

—

John sees, but he doesn’t observe. Rosie grows tall and leggy, reaching the ninety-fourth height percentile by age two. Her blonde hair forms ringlets around her long, oval face, and when it’s grown out enough, she pulls stray strands into her mouth and worries at them with her downturned lips. John can still see the tips of her cupid’s bow when he tries to brush the hair out of her mouth and her lips compress into a thin, defiant line.

She’s difficult. John tries to remember whether he was this difficult, but really, who is he to say? Pointlessly, he asks Mary the same question. 

“Were you like this?” he sighs, having finally extracted Rosie from her books and stuffed animals and elaborately well-appointed blanket fort, “cannons” included. It’s two in the morning. 

“Oh, John.” Mary turns onto her back and pats his hand. “All children are like this.”

John isn’t convinced. He seems to have populated his life with one more impossible person. 

 _MY_ _palace!_ she’d yelled at him from her fort, hurling a bouncy ball at his head.

—

To her credit, Mary has taken all the allure out of cocaine unless it’s drawn up off the warmth of her skin. Her eyes crinkle as she looks down at him on those special occasions, affectionate, perceptive, granting her blessing before she takes his honed senses and pulls them all into her, into the very centre of the universe. Why would anyone settle for a solitary high?

“I think you’re addicted to _me_ ,” she sighs as Sherlock pulls her knickers down with his teeth.

“Controlled use,” he murmurs.

Mary laughs and captures him between her thighs.

—

It’s understandable that John doesn’t go on cases anymore. He has Rosie to consider now. Sherlock wouldn’t ask him to put that at risk.

—

John works hard at connecting with his daughter. He tries to accept the intermittent ferocity of her affections, the intelligent edges of her impatience, the disconcerting ease with which she charms strangers. She loves the zoo, so they spend a lot of time there together, just the two of them. 

Sherlock and Mary’s liaisons come less frequently now, usually once a month, because zoo days are convenient and regularly scheduled. Mary passes for domesticated now, just like her husband. Sometimes Sherlock feels like a hidden gear in the conjugal clockwork. It’s all become so safe. He grows bored. He starts wondering whether all passion has an expiration date—like anything biological, really—but then, _always_ then there’s a glint in Mary’s eye the next time they meet, because oh, she can tell he’s slipping, and those are the days when he shudders through the wreckage of his dreary expectations, remade once more in the empty afternoon of a woman who knows the taste of his blood.

—

“Why do you keep calling him Uncle Mycroft?” Rosie asks, pointing at a picture of a boy in shorts. “He’s only ten right there.”

She’s snuggled into John’s lap, and they’re flipping through a photo album at the Holmes family home. Sherlock sits across the room by the fireplace, phone in hand, scrolling and scrolling through who knows what. John sips some more mulled wine. It hasn’t been a bad evening, as Christmas dinners go, and spending some time reconnecting with Sherlock has put him in a nostalgic mood, even if they’re all here only because Mummy Holmes invited them.

“Because that’s what Mum calls him.”

“Why?”

“Because he used to watch our every move and tell us what to do,” he says.

Rosie frowns and frustratedly digs an elbow into John’s ribs. 

“Oi!” he scolds.

“That doesn’t make any _sense_. You can’t watch every single movement. Are uncles are supposed to do that?”

“Don’t know. Never had one.”

They continue flipping through the album. John pauses and picks up a loose photo sandwiched between the pages: a scrawny Sherlock, about six years old, standing on one leg with a sash around his waist and a patch of construction paper taped over one eye. He’s showing all his teeth and brandishing a butter knife. 

“Found your Long John Silver phase,” John says wryly, glancing up at Sherlock, who doesn’t look up from his phone. 

“Bluebeard.”

“Sorry?”

“I was Bluebeard.”

John tilts his head, considering. “Bit dark, that story, wasn’t it? What with all the…”

“I wasn’t in full possession of the facts.”

“You were what, six?”

“Five. Tall.”

“Like me,” pipes up Rosie. John looks down at her and nods. 

“Like you.”

“And Uncle Mycroft.”

“And Uncle Mycroft,” John repeats, sipping more wine. “He’s a really tall kid here.”

“Because it’s genetic,” says Rosie. John blinks at her, only half-surprised at the big word coming from her mouth.

“Tends to be, yeah. Who knows where your long legs came from.”

“Did you adopt me? Like Mum was adopted?”

“Oh. No, you were in Mum’s tummy, love.”

“Oh. You didn’t adopt me from Sherlock?”

John laughs, startled. “What? No, what makes you say that?” He glances up and sees Sherlock staring at her, his eyes sharp, watchful, and… skittish, quickly darting back to his phone.

“But then Mycroft isn’t really my uncle?”

“You…” John clears his throat, closes the book and sets it aside, hauls Rosie up off his lap and kisses her forehead. “You’re our daughter,” he says. “I’m getting tired. Too much nut loaf.”

“I’m not tired.” She picks up the album. “I want to look at more photos.” 

“Ah. Go find Mum.”

Rosie bites her lip, turns, and runs from the room. 

John sits quietly for several minutes. He stares at his knees a lot. Sherlock is still. He’s not scrolling much now. 

“Bright kid,” John finally says, sounding too loud. “Blazes through her schoolwork, if she feels like it.”

Sherlock shrugs a little, eyes on his screen.

“I mean, I’m not saying she couldn’t have got that from her Mum and Dad, but.” He swallows. Sherlock’s lips are compressed into a thin line, cupid’s bow still showing. Strange, how a little fear can transport a man’s face back to childhood.

Strange, how a person sees what they want to see.

John lets go of a brittle laugh, shakes his head, and sets his wine on a side table. “Ok, that—sorry.”

Sherlock looks up at him, brow furrowed, gaze intent. “For what?”

“For… Jesus, I don’t know.”

“You’re suggesting you might not be Rosamund’s father.”

“It was just—”

“Which is, of course, possible.”

“Sherlock.” John lowers his chin warningly.

“Many people go their whole lives assuming they know from purely circumstantial—”

“Sherlock, leave it.”

“Even when empirical observation suggests otherwise.”

The fire crackles.

“Ok.” John pauses, clenches a fist on the arm of his chair. “Ok, why not, let’s pretend I’m very stupid. Would you spell this out for me, please?”

Sherlock remains silent.

“Hm?” John’s body is thrumming. “Care to do that for me?”

“John.” Sherlock levels a gaze at him that’s equal parts patronising and apprehensive.

John takes a few deep breaths. Fights vertigo. Laughs. “You.”

“You were the one who suggested it.”

“That’s not funny.”

“No.”

“… _You?_ ”

Sherlock looks down at the carpet, obviously pained. When John speaks again, his voice sounds tight enough to snap.

“You fucked my wife.”

“Y—yes.”

“I’m supposed to believe that.”

Sherlock’s eyes meet his, and they’re suddenly very, very tired. “Rosamund walked in on us last week.”

John stands, hot and dark, the suffocating fury of an underground fire in his chest.

“I don’t know you.”

He walks quietly out of the room.

—

Ending the affair comes as a surprising relief. Sherlock hadn’t expected quite so many tears, though.

“Please, no.” Her voice is falling apart like the ragged edge of a torn dress. “He doesn’t touch me. He won’t touch me. He barely used to, but now… he won’t. He won’t even look at me. Please. Please, don’t leave, I’ll be all alone… please don’t leave me alone.”

Mary’s face is blotchy, wet, her eyes pink and swimming. For a moment, Sherlock feels pity for her, but… this is sentiment. It never belonged between them, and it won’t do to hold onto it now.

—

Sherlock thinks about Eastern Europe.

He thinks just as much about Rosie. 

—

In the end, he goes nowhere. Mary leaves for America, and John takes Rosie with him to Switzerland, of all places. Sherlock remains at 221B and lets the rent eat slowly into his savings. Mrs. Hudson would worry if she knew, but she still thinks he’s a celebrity in high demand, even though his face hasn’t graced the papers in years.

His body begins to manufacture its own highs and lows. Lestrade still requests his help, but many days, the best of his offers max out around an interest level of two, and so his texts go unanswered on Sherlock’s bedside table. Other days, Sherlock almost believes he can solve the world.

There is no more control. Four months after the Watsons have left, Mrs. Hudson finds him unconscious on the sitting room floor. He hasn’t made a list. 

—

_John,_

_I’m supposed to contact the people I’ve hurt. It’s a banal exercise, but perhaps it has some use. I’ve owed you an apology for years._

_I expect you know the extent of the affair by now. I won’t attempt to reason it out, except to say I became too attached to what she had to offer. That was a mistake. I will never cease to regret that it involved you._

_I send you this check not to atone for my actions, but to conclude the legacy I’ve left to Rosamund. She needn’t inherit my faults. You are her father, and a better one than I could ever be. I trust you will use this wisely._

_Perhaps it’s a strange thing to say, under the circumstances, but please give my love to Rosie._

_Best regards,_

_Sherlock._


End file.
